Hella Rises: Dawnland

by Karen Carr

“A little bit,” Huck said. His face, which had been ashen, began to regain its color.

  Sivan stuck the needle in Huck’s skin and began stitching. I turned away, not wanting to watch the silver needle dip in and out of Huck’s flesh. Instead, I watched his face for signs of change.

  Huck clenched his teeth and looked at me. “Why is it every time I’m near Jordan Lake, I am sick or injured?”

  “It’s my fault,” I said.

  “Don’t blame yourself for anything,” Huck said. He winced as Sivan stuck him again and turned toward her. “Are you sure I’m not supposed to feel anything?”

  “You’re definitely not changing. You wouldn’t care if she chopped your arm off.” I smiled and touched his forehead.

  “Then it’s true,” Huck said. He closed and opened his eyes. “I’m immune?”

  “Yea, I think so.” I said. “If your reaction is like mine, you’re going to be really tired. I slept for ten hours after I was bit.”

  “Zeke didn’t fall asleep when he was bit,” Huck said.

  “Zeke’s like a machine,” I said.

  “All done,” Sivan said. She cut the thread attached to Huck’s arm and put her medical supplies back in her bag.

  “How are we going to get Sivan to Harper?” I asked. “Without the helo, we have no way of getting back.”

  “I’ll ride,” Sivan said. She gave Huck a couple of shots in the arm and another one by the wound. “Hipslow stashed a kayak for me. I can row across the river.” Sivan stood up. “If your friend really needs me, we have to get going.”

  I helped Huck to his feet and he took one step and stumbled to the ground. “You’re going to be dizzy for a while.”

  “I’m going to be sick,” Huck said. He then heaved all over the ground.

  “Come on,” Sivan said. She helped Huck straighten out and handed him a bill. “For the stomach.”

  Huck took the pill and a bottle of water. We discussed the best options for getting back to Pittsboro and decided on walking back to Sivan’s to get her horse. We weren’t that far from the club house and the stables, and it would be easier to make it through the woods on horseback. We considered finding a car and driving back to Pittsboro, but didn’t want to be caught on Mace’s side of the river. Sivan’s kayak was only a one-seater, so Huck and I wouldn’t be able to travel with her past the river but at least we would be able to get her that far.

  “We’re going to have to find a way across,” I said as we walk back to the stables. “I’m going to have to go back with Trevan and Lily so that they don’t kill anyone else.”

  “No, Hella, you can’t,” Huck said. He was still to dizzy to walk on his own, so Sivan and I held him up. “We’re going to have to get Sivan to her kayak, and then meet the others at the rendezvous point. Zeke and the others are on their way, remember what Hipslow said. Plan get-the-fuck-out-of-here is in action.”

  “But what about the people in Pittsboro?” I asked. “What about Harper? How will I know she’s alright?”

  “Hipslow will take care of it,” Huck said. “He’s not going to let a little bomb stop our escape. He knows how important you are and how dangerous Mace is.”

  “I can take care of Harper,” Sivan said. “The way you described her, it sounds like multiple flesh wounds like when a horse gets trapped in a barbed wire fence.”

  We had already made it back to the clubhouse and walked around the pond to the stables. Sivan showed us where our horse was, since Huck was too weak to stand we would both ride one horse and I would be in charge of the reins. Sivan walked ahead to another stall to get her horse. I saddled the horse and put on her bridle and met Sivan outside the stables.

  Sivan handed us each a bag. “Ditch bags, I always keep a few packed. They have guns, maps, and food and water enough for a week each.”

  We set off to the river walking the horses in order for me to keep my virus because we didn’t want to spook the horses with a zero invasion. Huck held me in his arms while I guided the horse after Sivan’s. He seemed to be dozing on-and-off because I would feel his muscles relax and then his body slide backwards and then he would grasp me again with his arms. I didn’t talk to him, preferring instead to let him rest as much as he could. In what seemed like hours, but really wasn’t that long because the sun didn’t move much in the sky, we made it to the river.

  “Well, here’s where I leave you,” Sivan said. She dismounted her ride and tied the horse up under a small barn open on one side that was setup not far from the river. We did the same with our horse.

  With her small footprints on the ground everywhere, I had a feeling Sivan had been across the river more than this once. She uncovered a kayak and I helped her put it in the water while Huck rested in the only dry spot under an awning reaching out over the front of the barn. Sivan got in the kayak rowed into the river.

  I joined Huck under the awning and we watched Sivan kayak out across the river. The current was strong, but she was stronger and soon made it to the other side. She pulled the kayak into the trees and disappeared with it.

  “I hope she can save Harper,” I said.

  Huck put his arm around my shoulder. “The others will tell us. They’re not leaving until nightfall.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “It’s part of the plan,” Huck said. His eyelids were half-way covering his eyes. “No one is going to want to leave during the day, too many eye witnesses. Let’s look at the map.”

  “Are you sure you don’t need a nap?” I asked while I dug in my pack and pulled out the map that Sivan had given us.

  “No, well yea,” Huck said. Huck took the map and showed me the location of the rendezvous house. “Find a way there.” He handed the map back to me, stretched out and rested his head on my lap and soon fell asleep.

  We were near the rendezvous and on the right side of the river, so we wouldn’t have to cross back over. If we followed the river south, we would hit the lake and the house was on a peninsula where the two met. We’d be there in a couple of hours, hopefully before the sun set. I didn’t want to wake Huck just yet, so I leaned against the shelter and soon my eyes became heavy too.

  I must have dozed off because I woke to Huck shaking me.

  “Wake up,” Huck said.

  I opened my eyes to see the horses nervously prancing and whinnying.

  “What’s wrong with them?” I asked.

  “They sense something,” Huck said. “Let me look around.”

  Huck disappeared, leaving me alone under the awning. I put the map away and grabbed the reigns of Sivan’s horse, giving her a treat from the pack to keep her calm. I gave a treat to my horse wondering what was taking Huck so long. Mace’s men were probably watching us, and they had slit his throat, that’s why he hadn’t returned.

  Huck came back. “It was nothing.” His brow was furrowed, but he gave me a reassuring nod and took my hand. “You ready to go?”

  “Yea,” I said, letting him pull me up. “We can follow the river to the lake.”

  Huck looked over his shoulder. “Let’s go inland a bit before we start following the river. They’ll see our prints along the shore. This way, they’ll think we’ve gone across with Sivan.”

  “Sure, Huck. What about the horses?” I felt like something was wrong, like Huck had seen something but didn’t want me to know.

  “Sivan will be back for them,” Huck said.

  Huck took me into the woods. We watched each step we took, careful to avoid the parts of the ground that were still muddy from the rain. Footprints leading into the woods would be a dead give-away, and we’d be the ones dead.

  The woods were thick with thorny vines and impenetrable bushes. Where we could walk, fallen trunks blocked our way forward. We were constantly stooping and climbing over and under things, but it began to make me feel human again. Walking through the woods with Huck was cathartic. Instead of dwelling on my problems, I pretended we were on a nature hike, the path leading us to a park where we would fly a kite.<
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  I tried to keep Harper from my mind, but when she entered it I tried to send her my strength through the wind. There was nothing I could do for her, I understood that. Her fate was in Sivan’s hands. Sivan would make it to Pittsboro, I had no doubt about that. Whether or not she would save Harper’s life was a different story.

  Huck stopped every time he heard a snap of a branch and investigated, but it was always an animal, a bird, a falling branch, nothing to prevent us from moving forward. I was lost in the tranquility of the forest. Poison ivy wrapped its way up the tallest trees, the vine were as thick as my thighs. The sunlight dappled through the tall pines and the wide oaks and showed us the way through the woods. We travelled on for several hours before Huck brought us back to the river.

  “Let’s refill our bottles,” Huck said.

  The river bank was steep and I almost slid down it with my water bottle. Huck followed me and helped me get down the remaining few feet to the river’s edge.

  “Look over there,” Huck said. He pointed across the bank where two tigers were watching us. We must have been directly across from the tiger rescue.

  “Do they swim?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Huck said.

  “They look hungry,” I said.

  Huck laughed. “The current’s pretty strong here. I don’t think they’d be able to get to us even if they could swim.”

  We filled up the water bottles, and I took a deep sip of mine before I refilled it. “Look at the way the river forks. Is that where it meets the lake?”

  “I think you’re right, Hella. We’re almost there. It’s safe enough to walk the bank now. It’s steep, but the trees are also thick here and almost impossible to get through.”

  We walked along the bank for what seemed like another hour. This time I knew it was getting late because the sun was half way down the horizon.

  “We probably have four more hours of daylight,” I said.

  “We probably have another few minutes of walking,” Huck said. “I think we’re ready to turn inland.”

  A few minutes later we walked into an opening in the forest and I saw my new house. It was a large log cabin with a red metal roof. The trees canvased the top of the house, hiding most of it from the air. The setting reminded me of a snow globe I had as a child, and I felt at once comforted and warmed in its presence.

  “It looks like an old park house,” I said.

  “I think it was,” Huck said. “There’s miles of parkland around us. Nobody’s been here in years, I am sure of that. I doubt anyone even knows there’s a cabin here. It’s all ours.”

  “Good,” I said. “Can we go inside?”

  Huck tilted his head and grinned mischievously. “Come here.”

  He tugged my arm and pulled my body next to his. Before I knew what he was doing, he had picked me up and opened the door and then he carried me across the threshold.

  “Really Huck?” I asked when he put me down in the entryway.

  “Really, Hella,” Huck said. “This might be the only calm we get in weeks, months, or even years.” He ran his thumb across my lips. “Let’s enjoy it.”

  I closed my eyes and let his lips touch mine. Electricity fired through my body as he traced my mouth with his tongue. A tap on the window made me push him away. I laughed when I saw it was a bird pecking the sill.

  “Huck, let’s check the place first,” I said.

  His eyes travelled to my chest. His lids were still heavy, but he seemed wide awake. He brought me into his body for a long heart-felt hug.

  “Did that zero bite give you an extra dose of testosterone?” I asked. It took every fiver in my being to push him away again.

  “Yea, maybe,” Huck said. “Or maybe it’s being next to you, in private, like all alone.”

  “We don’t know we’re alone,” I said. “Come on, let’s check the place.” I walked into the living room with Huck right behind me, his hand on my rear.

  The living room actually was furnished. It had several well-worn couches and a couple of rocking chairs as well. It smelled of pine and had a giant fireplace on the far wall. The fireplace was filled with half-charred logs, as if someone had lit and put out a fire.

  “I’d love to light that,” I said.

  “Can’t,” Huck said. “It will draw too much attention. You know how far you can see smoke in the sky. It’ll be like a beacon for Mace.”

  “You’re right, but there’s no heat in this place.” I shivered and placed my hands across my chest to try and warm up.

  “There’s plenty of heat here,” Huck said. He found a blanket and put it around my shoulders. “Come here.”

  He brought me to the couch by the fireplace. I sank into the couch and he sat next to me, pulling me down by his side. We were lying next to each other with the blanket covering us up to our shoulders. Soon I stopped feeling cold and started feeling warm, really warm. By the growing mound in Huck’s pants, he was feeling pretty warm too.

  “Sorry,” Huck apologized and rearranged himself.

  “Don’t be,” I said. “It only means you are human.”

  Huck laughed and crushed me to his body. “I’m feeling more than human right now.”

  I shifted the weight of his gun belt which was poking my hip.

  “Sorry,” he said again. He pulled away from me and unfastened his belt, putting the gun and holster on the floor.

  “We’re going to be alone for a few more hours,” Huck murmured, his voice sounding husky.

  “Then why don’t you stay on top of me?” I pulled his body on top of mine and reached under his shirt, pressing my cool hands to his warm flesh.

  “What are you doing?” Huck asked. “You’re giving me goose-bumps with those frosty hands of yours.”

  “Something has to warm them up,” I said. “Why not your rear?” I moved my hands to his derriere.

  “Fair is fair,” Huck said. He slid his hands under the front of my shirt and rested them on my stomach.

  “You are still so hot, warm I mean.” I put my hands on Huck’s neck and pulled his face towards mine.

  Our lips touched followed by our tongues. Huck’s hands rose from my stomach to my bra. He glided them underneath the fabric and soon had sprung the latches. His hands went under my bra and caressed my chest. He flinched when my bra pulled on the bandage Sivan had put on his bite.

  “Let me help you.” I slid the straps of my bra through my shirt and dropped it to the floor.

  “Hella, I won’t be able to stop once I start,” Huck said, burying his head into my neck.

  “I don’t want you to stop,” I said.

  I unbuttoned and unzipped his pants, slipping my hand in between his pants and underwear. I had seen Huck naked, but had never felt him like this before.

  Huck grasped my hips and thrust his into my body. My hands travelled to his backside and ran under his shorts to feel his bare flesh. He had muscles everywhere.

  He pulled me up so I was sitting in his lap. He grasped the bottom of my shirt and yanked it over my head. The setting sunlight shone through the window and over my body. I instinctively covered my bare breasts with my arms, but Huck pulled them away.

  “Let me look at you.”

  Huck touched the sides of my breasts. My nipples were hard and pulsed with my heartbeat. He ran his fingers over them, making them even harder.

  “Huck, please,” I said. “I am freezing.”’

  “Please?” Huck said. He bent his head down and took one nipple in his mouth.

  I grabbed the back of his shirt and clawed it off of his back. He took his mouth off of my breasts for a brief second while he stripped his shirt off. He crushed his chest to mine, immediately warming my whole body and we made slow, silent love.

  Chapter 17

  Huck spooned me in his arms and I watched the unlit fireplace remembering all the great times I had with him. On our first night together, we had roasted marshmallows in the fireplace back at my apartment in Haverlyn Village. There, I felt
warm and safe and never would have expected people like Mace in this world. Then, my only enemies were exploding-head zeroes. Now, so much had changed. We had real enemies, deadly ones, ones that I couldn’t stop by my mere presence.

  “Are you warm now,” Huck asked, his hot breath sending another sensation through my body.

  I pushed my sweaty hair away from my forehead with my free hand. “From head to toe, and even on the inside, but I might get cold later.”

  “I’ll be here to warm you up, forever, Helena,” Huck said. His voice was still husky.

  “You promise?” I asked.

  “I promise,” he said. “’Until death do us part.”

  “The others will be here soon,” I said. I dangled my hand on the floor and grabbed my undergarments, putting them on under the blankets. “I’m hungry, too.”

  “Let me get you something to eat,” Huck said. “We stocked this place full of food.”

  Huck stood up and stretched. I watched his naked body as he flexed his muscles and remembered how he felt between my legs. With the others coming, and our new life on the run, we may never get another opportunity like this one. I sighed as Huck put on his underwear and pants, and strapped his holster around his waist.

  Huck strolled to the kitchen, barefoot and shirtless, and disappeared behind the door. Soon he reappeared with a tray filled with an assortment of goodies, including fresh bread and croissants from Georgia’s bakery and strawberries with honey drizzled on them.

  Huck plucked a strawberry from the bowl and fed it to me.

  “I’m going to miss this cooking,” I said. I took a strawberry and fed it to Huck. He took my hand and licked the extra honey from my fingertips.

  “Me, too,” Huck said, smacking his lips. “I’ll cook for you. We’ll grow this stuff on our own.”

  “Where?” I asked. “Out in the middle of the woods? In a city covered with zeroes? How long does it take a strawberry to grow? We’ll never be able to stop moving.”

  “This won’t last forever,” Huck said. “In a year, maybe this will all be over.”

  “You really think so, Huck?” I asked. It was possible, the way my virus killed zeroes, to clean the whole country, at least east of the Smoky Mountains. It might take me thirty years to do it, but it might be possible.